Emery, Flyers belted in Chicago

Philadelphia Flyers goalie Ray Emery looks up at the scoreboard after he was replaced by Steve Mason during the third period of an NHL hockey game against the Chicago Blackhawks Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, in Chicago. The Blackhawks won 7-2. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

Chicago Blackhawks goalie Antti Raanta (31) makes a save on a breakaway, short-handed shot by Philadelphia Flyers center Brayden Schenn during the third period of an NHL hockey game on Wednesday, Dec. 11, 2013, in Chicago. The Blackhawks won 7-2. (AP Photo/Charles Rex Arbogast)

CHICAGO -— They’re on a roll, but then, they’ve been on one for the past year. One dominant labor-shortened season by the Chicago Blackhawks produced a Stanley Cup, and after a short summer, they immediately shifted back into cruise control.

Against the Flyers Wednesday night, it took a while before the Hawks hit the gas, but a five-goal second period was more than enough to send their road-weary guests home shocked and awed in a 7-2 defeat at United Center. On the long ride home, the Flyers could continue to ponder one nagging question...

How good or bad are they?

Forgive them if the answer doesn’t readily come to mind.

“For us waiting here for them to come in, we let them off the hook,” Scott Hartnell said. “But they have a lot of players that can skate and make plays, and at times, it looked like they were playing against kids out there.”

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The kiddie corps Flyers can take solace in taking away points in three games of a brutally tough six-game road trip (2-3-1). But at 13-15-3 they are what they’ve been most of the season, a sub-.500 team residing just south of the Playoff Line.

“I’m sure nobody’s satisfied with it,” coach Craig Berube said of his team’s road trip. “I’m certainly not and I don’t think my players are, either. We could have done a lot better and I’m sure they think so, too.”

For just desserts, the Flyers also got a bitter taste of just how far they are below the league’s best team.

Only one night after they went on the road and blasted the Dallas Stars 6-2, the Blackhawks (23-6-5) looked somewhat sleepy in the opening period. The Flyers, with ex-Hawks goalie Ray Emery looking confident in the crease, jumped on top via a Jake Voracek power play goal, then went into the first intermission with heads held high.

Not a common posture for United Center visitors, but one that did serve as an effective wakeup call for the home team. So did a Kimmo Timonen holding penalty in the final minute of the first period, setting up Duncan Keith with Andrej Meszaros then was stripped of the puck in the neutral zone. The Hawks rushed in, and Andrew Shaw rushed around the net to beat Emery with a wraparound goal at 1:22 for a 2-1 lead.

“They got those two quick goals but I felt like we were still in control of the game,” Berube said. He wouldn’t be thinking that for long.

On a power play, Voracek coughed up the puck at the point. Moments later, ex-Flyer Michal Handzus gave the puck a kick but was credited with touching it with his stick as it curved through Emery’s failing defenses for a shorthanded goal and 3-1 lead.

The Flyers did snap back, scoring on that same power play, Steve Downie getting the goal while pounding away on a scramble with Brayden Schenn. The Flyers then killed a penalty, but couldn’t keep the Hawks from attacking in the zone. It took them another half-minute before another ex-Flyer, Kris Versteeg, volleyed a Brendan Saad pass from behind the net past Emery for a 4-2 lead.

It was all Hawks then, and at 14:15 a shot by Patrick Sharp - who would finish the Hawks’ deluge with a third period goal - hit Jonathan Toews on the arm and bounced into the net for a 5-2 lead.

The period would end without further damage for the Flyers, but all of 1:05 into the third, a broken-stick shot by Brent Seabrook deflected past Emery, paving the way for his early exit. And gave the Flyers another reason to take a couple of more bad penalties.

For the Flyers, the call should have already been sent to warm up the chartered jet. They had to hurry home in time for a game Thursday night against the Canadiens, which offers them another chance to answer that nagging question...

How good or bad are the Flyers?

Maybe it isn’t the best time to answer that right now.

“It felt like 25 games,” Scott Hartnell said of the road trip. “You don’t have back to back games, you have a bunch of different cities all over the map. We did get a couple of wins, which is nice, but you can’t dwell too much on a 7-2 loss when you have to play tomorrow night against the Habs. They’re another quick team that makes plays.”

Again?

•

The road trip from hockey hell was coming to an end in Chicago Wednesday night, and as a reward, the Flyers were to jet home and try to get ready for a home game Thursday night against the Montreal Canadiens. First though, there was a chance for reflection.

Coming off a lost two-game trip in Florida and having sunk a couple of rungs below .500, the Flyers were staring at their toughest schedule stretch of the season. It would be a post-Thanksgiving belch of eight games over 14 days that saw them host the Winnipeg Jets on Black Friday, then commence a six-game road trip the next night in Nashville. Through Minnesota and Detroit, down to Dallas and all the way to Ottawa and finally back to Chicago before hitting home for the waiting Habs, the Flyers were looking to at least hold their own rather than fade to oblivion.

Entering this game at United Center Wednesday night, they had gone 3-2-1 with two to go on this stretch. They are still on the outside looking in when it came to a playoff-worthy spot, yet are close enough to keep breathing hard down the necks of the conference contenders.

All of which leads to one easy conclusion ... keep doing what keeps them breathing hard.

Since taking over as head coach three losses into the season, Craig Berube has been preaching urgency and backing up the words by incorporating a system that demands constant but carefully plotted movement. Although the Flyers’ progress since the start of the season can be tracked without the help of GPS, there’s no denying they’re at least moving in the right direction, and with a team-defense approach that seems to suit them.

“That’s how you’re going to win games in this league,” Wayne Simmonds said earlier Wednesday. “You’ve got to have everyone pulling the rope. ... It makes it a lot easier to backcheck when we don’t have two guys flying in on the forecheck all the time, and you get a lot more tired coming back. I think it’s been working well for us.”

With that system changeover, Berube also helped his team prepare for the rigors of this ridiculously scheduled road trip that logged some 5,600 miles, sandwiched between home games two weeks apart.

Referencing Berube’s “second training camp” in October, Simmonds said: “The first two weeks, we just skated. That’s all we did was skate. In this day and age in the NHL, it’s a skating league. If you’re not skating, you’re not doing anything.”

The work took a toll on the Flyers’ level of conditioning — it improved it. The impact of that on the schedule during these first two weeks in December is debatable, but perhaps the results speak for themselves.

“We’ve played teams that are very tough,” Jake Voracek said. “We played in Detroit, that was a tough game. Dallas is playing very well. ... All those games weren’t easy. We had to dig in and grind it out, and it’s been a long one.

“We hadn’t been on a long trip for a year-and-a-half now. So that’s something different for us. I guess we’ve done a good job so far.”